Introduction to Control Room Management

  Control Room Management (CRM) is a regulation issued by the United States Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) requiring operators of pipelines carrying natural gas, oil and hazardous liquids to follow industry best practices in their control rooms.

These regulations were issued following several pipeline incidents that led to loss of life or severe environmental impacts, where the control room operation was identified as a contributing factor.

  To understand some of the errors that led to the development of the CRM regulations, I would suggest you review the 55-minute video “Anatomy of a disaster” on the Chemical Safety Board website. Several errors by the control room and in maintenance procedures led to a massive explosion that killed 15 and injured 180 people at the BP Texas City refinery. A Spanish version of the video is available further down the web page.

https://www.csb.gov/videos/anatomy-of-a-disaster/

  PHMSA CRM Site

https://www.phmsa.dot.gov/pipeline/control-room-management/control-room-management

CRM Rule 192.631 Gas Pipelines

https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=bc6f965564b0caa004e82eddfc1e529e&mc=true&node=se49.3.192_1631&rgn=div8

CRM Rule 195.446 Liquid operators

https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=282518466047bb5994fd54692b5e8588&mc=true&node=se49.3.195_1446&rgn=div8

  In the CRM regulations, there are many requirements for US operators to comply with. The regulations are brief and may be somewhat vague. This is done to allow operators to customize  their compliance to their own unique operation.

If you would like to explore this further, I can conduct classes at your facility or on Skype to better explain each part of the regulations and what the best practices are for meeting compliance. This would take several classes over a couple of days, depending on the number of questions. If this is something you are interested in, let me know and we can discuss pricing.